False Reverence Quotes

Nothing has so exposed men of learning to contempt and ridicule as their ignorance of things which are known to all but themselves. Those who have been taught to consider the institutions of the schools as giving the last perfection to human abilities are surprised to see men wrinkled with study, yet wanting to be instructed in the minute circumstances of propriety, or the necessary form of daily transaction; and quickly shake off their reverence for modes of education which they find to produce no ability above the rest of mankind.

We should not touch our idols: their gilding will remain on our hands.

Admiration is the basis of ignorance.

Most of the ladies and gentlemen who mourn the passing of the nation's leaders wouldn't know a leader if they saw one. If they had the bad luck to come across a leader, they would find out that he might demand something from them, and this impertinence would put an abrupt and indignant end to their wish for his return.

Look at who people are elevating and deifying in the public eye, and ask yourself what those people have done to receive such lauding and what it is they haven't. When you look at that you say, okay, are these people being revered for something of merit, or are they completely hallow? Or even worse, are they being revered for something that is actually destructive?

Some people write heavily, some write lightly. I prefer the light approach because I believe there is a great deal of false reverence about. There is too much solemnity and intensity in dealing with sacred matters; too much speaking in holy tones.

Can there be greater foolishness than the respect you pay to people collectively when you despise them individually?

Satan is willing to have us worship anything, however sacred - the Bible, the crucifix, the church - if only we do not worship God Himself.

Often, we try to raise dead leaders and bury live ones.

The kind uncles and aunts of the race are more esteemed than its true spiritual fathers and mothers.

Our admiration is so given to dead martyrs that we have little time for living heroes.

People who only listen to preachers have a tendency to put them on a pedestal, but those who live with preachers recognize that they are just common men.

Men reverence one another, not yet God.

Some consider me as a living Buddha. That's nonsense. That's silly. That's wrong. If they consider me a simple Buddhist monk, however, that's probably okay.

We imagine that the admiration of the works of celebrated men has become common, because the admiration of their names has become so.